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I've always held that the David Lynch version of Dune was an underrated masterpiece. Tastes vary, but the film was visually stunning and I can't think of anothe

I've always held that the David Lynch version of Dune was an underrated masterpiece. Tastes vary, but the film was visually stunning and I can't think of another director from the time that would have done justice to the novel. Obviously Dune is a big deal but I'm frequently surprised at just how little attention it's gotten in pop culture beyond the odd references to Butlerean Jihads and the odd pumpkin spice joke. What I wouldn't give for an expansive HBO season-length treatment of the first book.

jnurmine 8y ago
Exactly. After reading the whole Dune trilogy, my first thought was: wow, what an experience. My second thought was: whoever makes a series of films of this, and stays faithful to the books, they will surely make billions of dollars.
- bluejekyll 8y ago
  Did you see the sci-fi mini series? It was very faithful to the books, but I don’t think it made billions.
  - ianai 8y ago
    I was glued to my tv for it. But they were still bound by early 2000s tech and budgets. Dune hasn’t seen the commercialization that the Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, nor guardians of the galaxy universes have. But it could be made into a similarly action packed film series. Though I’d argue Dune is closer kin to LOTR/hobbit/Tolkien. My guess is that dune suffers from a dead author and it’s long passages on how societies work. Someone would need to translate the plots and central themes and ideas to the screen.
    - duskwuff 8y ago
      The best Dune novel, IMO, is God Emperor of Dune. And it's completely unfilmable. The primary character is conspicuously nonhuman. Much of the exposition, as well as a number of important plot developments, are only delivered through his internal narrative. An attempted film adaptation would probably try to focus on one of the human secondary characters, and would, by so doing, completely miss the point of the book.
      - ianai 8y ago
        I think they could focus on the worm/human internal struggle through actions made over the course of millennia. First movie being the plot that turns him toward the worm. Second movie being the gradual steps towards the worm and inhuman choices. Third movie being his death. (Forgive me if this is wrong somehow importantly. It’s been a while.). But you’re right on it being a big challenge.
        duskwuff 8y ago
        Much of what you're describing as the first and second movie is covered in Children of Dune. God Emperor is set several thousand years later, and would correspond to your third movie. The interim period is incredibly dull -- the boredom and stagnation of total societal stability is, in fact, an important theme of the book.
    - bluejekyll 8y ago
      Yeah. It needs a Jackson like person and the entire crew from LOTR to really pull off. People with the same depth of understanding of the books. LOTR’s art director had done amazing works before those movies, and it was neat to see that transposed to the screen. I bet the studios look at it and don’t want to touch it based on the past performance of the movie.
      - ianai 8y ago
        I’m definitely curious as to what they think in Hollywood about making a series out of it. They’re clearly out of ideas with all the reboots and sequels/prequels.
  - SpikeDad 8y ago
    Because it was awful - wooden acting and laughable SFX.
  - jnurmine 8y ago
    Nope! I have missed it. The only one I've seen is the movie with "that Twin Peaks guy". Though it is a cult film and all that, I did not think it was very good to be honest. The movie was rather confusing and made more sense after having read the books. A new film/films would be great for many reasons, including the complexity of the plot and the sheer timescale involved. For example, at the core Star Wars is a rather template-like father-son good vs. evil monomyth, with all kinds of small (interesting) details woven around it. It also has a top-tier presentation. I like Star Wars of course but the plot itself is pretty basic, perhaps that is why it appeals to so many people from small kids to grown-ups. The Dune trilogy could offer so much more, I believe, if someone like Jackson of the LOTR fame would pick it up.
    - jnurmine 8y ago
      Trilogy: it's actually six books, not three. What to call it? Hexalogy? After the original six came books by Herbert's son, but I've never read those so cannot comment.
golergka 8y ago
> I can't think of another director from the time that would have done justice to the novel Alejandro Jodorowsky?
- weeksie 8y ago
  Fair.
- FullMetalBitch 8y ago
  Jodoroski dune was crazy and not in the dune way, his ideas were interesting in an artsy way but it wasn't dune, I think he didn't even read the book
  - duskwuff 8y ago
    It would not have been a faithful adaptation of Dune. It might not have even bore a passing resemblance to the novel! But it would have been one hell of a film.
- aldoushuxley001 8y ago
  I hope someone eventually reworks their massive storyboard into a Dune movie. They literally did all of the work already.
  - egypturnash 8y ago
    Storyboards are just the beginning. There is a lot of work between even the most polished storyboards and the final product. Go find one of the Marvel films, skip to the credits, and watch them all the way through; pretty much everyone in that list would have been hired after the boards were done, and worked for a year or three. Don't fast-forward. Don't get up and pee. Don't get distracted by Deadpool popping up and making a fart joke. Just let the amount of work that goes into modern effects-heavy movies sink in.
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    Didn't that storyboard work out to something like twenty hours of screen time?
detritus 8y ago
It's a bit unfortunate, but - the original 'synthetic marijuana' that was sold here in Britain a few years back called 'Spice' (that in turn gave its name as a broad catch-all for all subsequent types of much-worse synthetics) - based its name from the magical stuff in Dune. And yes, the movie was excellent, I thought :)
lunchladydoris 8y ago
I came here to say exactly this. I've always loved his version of Dune and I was genuinely surprised when I got online years later and starting seeing that most people seemed to think it was bad.
- reddit_clone 8y ago
  I liked that movie too. Only thing I didn't like was the interpretation of 'wierding ways' as an acoustic weapon. I always imagined it to be a super capable martial art.
  - cgh 8y ago
    That, and how it seemed like Paul made it rain in the end. He was a man playing god, not an actual weather god.
    - Animats 8y ago
      Dune, today, sounds like something M. Night Shyamalan would make into a movie.
    - gpderetta 8y ago
      IIRC at the end of the book the fremen use their vast reserves of water to change the planet climate. Although the film doesn't make it explict, it does show the reserves of water.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    That was actually one of the parts I did like. The book's portayal felt like some kind of weird mystical thing, while the weirding modules felt like actual science fiction.
bluejekyll 8y ago
I find it interesting that after reading books so many of us want to see it visualized on the screen. After reading Enders Game to my son, we watched the movie. The acting wasn’t great, and they condensed the story a lot, but it was still fun to see the way everything was reproduced on screen (and he loves it).
madengr 8y ago
I agree, I thought it was good too. It drifted from the book, but sometimes in a good way. I liked the scenes with the navigator in the tank. The Voice amplifiers were kind of corny.
gushers 8y ago
You neglect, of course, that David Lynch, himself, sought to distance himself from the movie, considering it something of an embarassment, and requesting an Alan Smithee [1] credit for at least one version of its release. In some ways, we can look back on it with a sort of "so-bad-it's-good" a e s t h e t i c in mind, and when understanding David Lynch's sensibilities, you can still catch a glimpse of his creative influence shining through. But really, David Lynch is ultimately correct in his self-effacing critique. It's kitschy and campy in a lot of ways. Just watch the closing credits in isolation, if you don't agree, and try and challenge that opinion again. To understand what I'm talking about, watch Dune, then watch Eraserhead, and then watch Dune again. Eraserhead informs us of David Lynch's purest intent realized as a feature presentation. You can see some of Eraserhead in Kenneth McMillan's portrayal of Vladimir Harkonnen (and indeed, it's the scene that Jack Nance [3] appears in), but that's really about it. That Dune doesn't live up to the visualizations of Moebius' imaginary realms [4], and that much of the budgeting, politics and film making technology of the day stood in the way of the final theatrical release is probably what bummed David Lynch out about it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRzVFlZxBv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRzVFlZxBv4 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Nance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Nance [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud
- weeksie 8y ago
  I didn't "neglect" that, I'm well aware Lynch distanced himself from the movie and that doesn't have anything to do with whether or not I enjoyed it. I'm not convinced deconstruction is always useful but I do think it can be fun.
yellowapple 8y ago
It still has the single best movie soundtrack I've ever heard (and yet the article didn't even mention it, or if it did, not prominently enough for me to notice). I'm a musician (albeit an amateur one); a good sountrack makes or breaks a film, and that definitely made Dune for me. The main theme in particular is unforgettable.
- Fnoord 8y ago
  Part Two is about the games spawned from the Dune universe. The author (or someone else) could write an article about the audio in the Dune movie/mini series, as well as the music inspired by the Dune universe. Many other famous actors such as Virginia Madsen, Brad Dourif, and Juergen Prochnow (also famous of Das Boot) were not mentioned either.
AndrewStephens 8y ago
Dune is visually great but the script and performances are terrible. So much of the novel is concerned with the inner motives of the characters and the wheels within wheels of plots and counterplots. Lynch tried to capture this with ridiculous voiceovers that slow down each scene and don't really help anyone who hasn't read the book anyway. I don't make films so what do I know, but I have always thought that the only way to film Dune is to ignore all the background and make a rip-roaring adventure film with giant worms and wizzing ornithopters. The Lord of the Rings films were successful in keeping the general tone and most of the plot of the source material while jettisoning elements that grind what Lynch made to a halt.

jnurmine 8y ago

Exactly. After reading the whole Dune trilogy, my first thought was: wow, what an experience. My second thought was: whoever makes a series of films of this, and stays faithful to the books, they will surely make billions of dollars.

bluejekyll 8y ago
Did you see the sci-fi mini series? It was very faithful to the books, but I don’t think it made billions.
- ianai 8y ago
  I was glued to my tv for it. But they were still bound by early 2000s tech and budgets. Dune hasn’t seen the commercialization that the Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, nor guardians of the galaxy universes have. But it could be made into a similarly action packed film series. Though I’d argue Dune is closer kin to LOTR/hobbit/Tolkien. My guess is that dune suffers from a dead author and it’s long passages on how societies work. Someone would need to translate the plots and central themes and ideas to the screen.
  - duskwuff 8y ago
    The best Dune novel, IMO, is God Emperor of Dune. And it's completely unfilmable. The primary character is conspicuously nonhuman. Much of the exposition, as well as a number of important plot developments, are only delivered through his internal narrative. An attempted film adaptation would probably try to focus on one of the human secondary characters, and would, by so doing, completely miss the point of the book.
    - ianai 8y ago
      I think they could focus on the worm/human internal struggle through actions made over the course of millennia. First movie being the plot that turns him toward the worm. Second movie being the gradual steps towards the worm and inhuman choices. Third movie being his death. (Forgive me if this is wrong somehow importantly. It’s been a while.). But you’re right on it being a big challenge.
      - duskwuff 8y ago
        Much of what you're describing as the first and second movie is covered in Children of Dune. God Emperor is set several thousand years later, and would correspond to your third movie. The interim period is incredibly dull -- the boredom and stagnation of total societal stability is, in fact, an important theme of the book.
  - bluejekyll 8y ago
    Yeah. It needs a Jackson like person and the entire crew from LOTR to really pull off. People with the same depth of understanding of the books. LOTR’s art director had done amazing works before those movies, and it was neat to see that transposed to the screen. I bet the studios look at it and don’t want to touch it based on the past performance of the movie.
    - ianai 8y ago
      I’m definitely curious as to what they think in Hollywood about making a series out of it. They’re clearly out of ideas with all the reboots and sequels/prequels.
- SpikeDad 8y ago
  Because it was awful - wooden acting and laughable SFX.
- jnurmine 8y ago
  Nope! I have missed it. The only one I've seen is the movie with "that Twin Peaks guy". Though it is a cult film and all that, I did not think it was very good to be honest. The movie was rather confusing and made more sense after having read the books. A new film/films would be great for many reasons, including the complexity of the plot and the sheer timescale involved. For example, at the core Star Wars is a rather template-like father-son good vs. evil monomyth, with all kinds of small (interesting) details woven around it. It also has a top-tier presentation. I like Star Wars of course but the plot itself is pretty basic, perhaps that is why it appeals to so many people from small kids to grown-ups. The Dune trilogy could offer so much more, I believe, if someone like Jackson of the LOTR fame would pick it up.
  - jnurmine 8y ago
    Trilogy: it's actually six books, not three. What to call it? Hexalogy? After the original six came books by Herbert's son, but I've never read those so cannot comment.

golergka 8y ago

> I can't think of another director from the time that would have done justice to the novel Alejandro Jodorowsky?

weeksie 8y ago
Fair.
FullMetalBitch 8y ago
Jodoroski dune was crazy and not in the dune way, his ideas were interesting in an artsy way but it wasn't dune, I think he didn't even read the book
- duskwuff 8y ago
  It would not have been a faithful adaptation of Dune. It might not have even bore a passing resemblance to the novel! But it would have been one hell of a film.
aldoushuxley001 8y ago
I hope someone eventually reworks their massive storyboard into a Dune movie. They literally did all of the work already.
- egypturnash 8y ago
  Storyboards are just the beginning. There is a lot of work between even the most polished storyboards and the final product. Go find one of the Marvel films, skip to the credits, and watch them all the way through; pretty much everyone in that list would have been hired after the boards were done, and worked for a year or three. Don't fast-forward. Don't get up and pee. Don't get distracted by Deadpool popping up and making a fart joke. Just let the amount of work that goes into modern effects-heavy movies sink in.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  Didn't that storyboard work out to something like twenty hours of screen time?

detritus 8y ago

It's a bit unfortunate, but - the original 'synthetic marijuana' that was sold here in Britain a few years back called 'Spice' (that in turn gave its name as a broad catch-all for all subsequent types of much-worse synthetics) - based its name from the magical stuff in Dune. And yes, the movie was excellent, I thought :)

lunchladydoris 8y ago

I came here to say exactly this. I've always loved his version of Dune and I was genuinely surprised when I got online years later and starting seeing that most people seemed to think it was bad.

reddit_clone 8y ago
I liked that movie too. Only thing I didn't like was the interpretation of 'wierding ways' as an acoustic weapon. I always imagined it to be a super capable martial art.
- cgh 8y ago
  That, and how it seemed like Paul made it rain in the end. He was a man playing god, not an actual weather god.
  - Animats 8y ago
    Dune, today, sounds like something M. Night Shyamalan would make into a movie.
  - gpderetta 8y ago
    IIRC at the end of the book the fremen use their vast reserves of water to change the planet climate. Although the film doesn't make it explict, it does show the reserves of water.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  That was actually one of the parts I did like. The book's portayal felt like some kind of weird mystical thing, while the weirding modules felt like actual science fiction.

bluejekyll 8y ago

I find it interesting that after reading books so many of us want to see it visualized on the screen. After reading Enders Game to my son, we watched the movie. The acting wasn’t great, and they condensed the story a lot, but it was still fun to see the way everything was reproduced on screen (and he loves it).

madengr 8y ago

I agree, I thought it was good too. It drifted from the book, but sometimes in a good way. I liked the scenes with the navigator in the tank. The Voice amplifiers were kind of corny.

gushers 8y ago

You neglect, of course, that David Lynch, himself, sought to distance himself from the movie, considering it something of an embarassment, and requesting an Alan Smithee [1] credit for at least one version of its release. In some ways, we can look back on it with a sort of "so-bad-it's-good" a e s t h e t i c in mind, and when understanding David Lynch's sensibilities, you can still catch a glimpse of his creative influence shining through. But really, David Lynch is ultimately correct in his self-effacing critique. It's kitschy and campy in a lot of ways. Just watch the closing credits in isolation, if you don't agree, and try and challenge that opinion again. To understand what I'm talking about, watch Dune, then watch Eraserhead, and then watch Dune again. Eraserhead informs us of David Lynch's purest intent realized as a feature presentation. You can see some of Eraserhead in Kenneth McMillan's portrayal of Vladimir Harkonnen (and indeed, it's the scene that Jack Nance [3] appears in), but that's really about it. That Dune doesn't live up to the visualizations of Moebius' imaginary realms [4], and that much of the budgeting, politics and film making technology of the day stood in the way of the final theatrical release is probably what bummed David Lynch out about it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRzVFlZxBv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRzVFlZxBv4 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Nance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Nance [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud

weeksie 8y ago
I didn't "neglect" that, I'm well aware Lynch distanced himself from the movie and that doesn't have anything to do with whether or not I enjoyed it. I'm not convinced deconstruction is always useful but I do think it can be fun.

yellowapple 8y ago

It still has the single best movie soundtrack I've ever heard (and yet the article didn't even mention it, or if it did, not prominently enough for me to notice). I'm a musician (albeit an amateur one); a good sountrack makes or breaks a film, and that definitely made Dune for me. The main theme in particular is unforgettable.

Fnoord 8y ago
Part Two is about the games spawned from the Dune universe. The author (or someone else) could write an article about the audio in the Dune movie/mini series, as well as the music inspired by the Dune universe. Many other famous actors such as Virginia Madsen, Brad Dourif, and Juergen Prochnow (also famous of Das Boot) were not mentioned either.

AndrewStephens 8y ago

Dune is visually great but the script and performances are terrible. So much of the novel is concerned with the inner motives of the characters and the wheels within wheels of plots and counterplots. Lynch tried to capture this with ridiculous voiceovers that slow down each scene and don't really help anyone who hasn't read the book anyway. I don't make films so what do I know, but I have always thought that the only way to film Dune is to ignore all the background and make a rip-roaring adventure film with giant worms and wizzing ornithopters. The Lord of the Rings films were successful in keeping the general tone and most of the plot of the source material while jettisoning elements that grind what Lynch made to a halt.